- published: 18 Mar 2014
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Peter Joseph Lenné (the Younger) (29 September 1789 — 23 January 1866) was a Prussian gardener and landscape architect from Bonn who worked in the German classicist style.
Lenné was the son of the royal court gardener, Peter Joseph Lenné the Elder, and his wife, Anna Catharina Potgieter (also Potgeter). After the Abitur, Lenné decided to work with gardens. He began his apprenticeship as a gardener in 1808 with his uncle, Josef Clemens Weyhe, the court gardener in Brühl.
From 1809 to 1812, Lenné took many study trips, paid for by his father, which took him to Southern Germany, to France, and to Switzerland. In 1811, he completed a long internship in Paris with Gabriel Thouin, who was then the most famous garden architect in Europe. This made him a master landscaper. On another of these trips, Lenné made the acquaintance of the creator of the English Garden in Munich, the landscape gardener Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell, who would have a lasting influence of Lenné's work.
In 1812, Lenné followed his father to Koblenz, where he had been named Director of the Gardens by the Prefect Jules Doazan. Later in that year, Lenné became active at Schloss Schönbrunn, where he would remain until 1814. He then returned to Koblenz, where he was give private garden commissions until 1815. The "Erweiterung der Festungsanlagen veranlasste ihn zu einem Plan für die Verschönerung der Stadt mit Gartenanlagen", which was not carried out because of a lack of funds. In 1816, he returned to Potsdam after the suggestions of Prussian forestry official Georg Ludwig Hartig and General Graf von Hacke. There he received the position of Assistant Gardener to the Court Garden Director in Sanssouci.